Yeah I pulled it out originally because I was tired of people saying that “gi” is almost always hard g, and I don’t think the lack of f makes a difference (because English spelling rules are silly, like you say. In the other thread I mentioned that just because the word “women” exists we don’t pronounce every “wom” sequence with a short i sound).
Not everyone pronounces “women” with a short i sound, it’s regional and there are no arguments about the “proper” pronouciation. The word is clearly understood either way so it doesn’t matter.
Yeah of course “proper” doesn’t really mean anything when talking about idolects. I’m curious though–I’ve been trying to get more information about the /wʊmən/ pronunciation for awhile. Do you know what region it’s common to? That pronunciation doesn’t show up in any dictionary (or at least any American one) except wiktionary and whenever I search for it there’s not much info about it. I’m trying to figure out if it’s regional or a more recent trend spread across a younger group online or something.
Lmao, idk why anyone would claim that either. Re: the other part, I also don’t think there’s any inherent reason the “f”, but in my sleepy haze writing this last night I wasn’t able to think of an example with the soft “g” followed by “if”. I feel like it must exist but I’m too tired to find it.
Looks like the only “normal”(ish) word that has the gif string is fungiform, and even that has both hard/soft g listed as pronunciations. There are also apparently a few long words like spongiferous and some biologic classes (as opposed to (eg) species) ending in -formes that happen to end in -giformes (like Archaeopterygiformes). But I wouldn’t expect too many people to have those in their pocket during a discussion of -gif- words.
Yeah I pulled it out originally because I was tired of people saying that “gi” is almost always hard g, and I don’t think the lack of f makes a difference (because English spelling rules are silly, like you say. In the other thread I mentioned that just because the word “women” exists we don’t pronounce every “wom” sequence with a short i sound).
Not everyone pronounces “women” with a short i sound, it’s regional and there are no arguments about the “proper” pronouciation. The word is clearly understood either way so it doesn’t matter.
Yeah of course “proper” doesn’t really mean anything when talking about idolects. I’m curious though–I’ve been trying to get more information about the /wʊmən/ pronunciation for awhile. Do you know what region it’s common to? That pronunciation doesn’t show up in any dictionary (or at least any American one) except wiktionary and whenever I search for it there’s not much info about it. I’m trying to figure out if it’s regional or a more recent trend spread across a younger group online or something.
Lmao, idk why anyone would claim that either. Re: the other part, I also don’t think there’s any inherent reason the “f”, but in my sleepy haze writing this last night I wasn’t able to think of an example with the soft “g” followed by “if”. I feel like it must exist but I’m too tired to find it.
Looks like the only “normal”(ish) word that has the gif string is fungiform, and even that has both hard/soft g listed as pronunciations. There are also apparently a few long words like spongiferous and some biologic classes (as opposed to (eg) species) ending in -formes that happen to end in -giformes (like Archaeopterygiformes). But I wouldn’t expect too many people to have those in their pocket during a discussion of -gif- words.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/words-containing-gif
https://word-finder.com/words-with/gif/